Contrary to Last Night...

And, I was trying so hard to be a skeptic!

Lesser known things about Justin Hudec:

-In a perfect world, I will never order the same item as someone else in my party at a restaurant. I will do everything that I can to be one of the last to order when I am in a group and will always have two different plates in mind just in case someone kypes my first choice.

-As the oldest of four brothers and having the closest brother being the single most stubborn person I know, I've been in my fair share of disagreements. I am nowhere near perfect, but I have considerable training in the art of choosing battles. You will find me passive on the issues where my investment is slim but shaking my head violently against the soft chimes of reason if I have any stake in the matter.

-There is nothing more crucial to comedy than commitment. Brevity, wit, appropriateness... these are the purest of vanities unless you are willing to walk a mile along train tracks wearing Crocs backward as they dig into your Achilles.

All that is to say that I can be stubborn when the kneejerk reaction kicks in. And, when I sat down to watch Shutter Island tonight my knee had already been jerked and I was settling in for two hours of nit-picking. Too many people had given it two thumbs up for me to give it a fair viewing; I was prepared to tell people why they were wrong.

And, for the first half of the film I had a mental list filling up. The cinematography seemed a little contrived and a little more obviously trying to be artsy. The flashbacks were getting a little longer everytime in order to give you more backstory but I still felt like I was being dragged along forceably through the set-up. There were definitely some weird people and events in the first hour but they made me much more uncomfortable than creeped out. Long story short, I had convinced myself that I didn't get it.

Then, the middle half hour begins and the scariness that had been advertised for months finally got cranked to 10. No longer was I uncomfortable, I was grabbing the seat dividers and wishing I had left myself some soda to temporarily pull myself out of the film. At the peak of the horror, as every ounce of your being is afraid of what is around this last turn... the best performance by any of the actors shines on screen. Literally. I want to send the actor who played G***** N**** more money because he was Heath-playing-Joker-esque in his role. Incredible.

At this point in time, my jaw is fixed to the top of my chest from adoring this guy's acting. It stays there through the 45 minutes of the movie as the plot crescendoes and your brain leaks out each of your ears. As your brain matter drips off your earlobes, little smiles from the first half of the movie wave and taunt you and swim laps in the pool of things you should have added up the first time through.

I mention all this for two reason:

1) Go see Shutter Island. I will go with you. I have no hesitations about dropping the price of four or five or twelve movie tickets on this movie. It's that good.

2) I'm getting all this sorted out in my brain so I can explain it to someone. No, not the stuff about the movie. In fact, part of me hates that I liked the film that so many people liked before me. So, I have to explain that along with why it bothers me and with my specific reasons of liking the movie. I'm not just a fanboy or anything, here.